Does the Man of Steel still matter after nearly 90 years?

A writer at the Oregonian addressed the issue of this year's Superman Day, and claims the Big Blue Boy Scout is still relevant. Near the beginning though, the following is told:

Every April 18, fans celebrate Superman Day, marking the 1938 release of Action Comics No. 1 — the debut that introduced a new kind of hero and helped shape the superhero genre as we know it today.

His first appearance had an original print run of about 130,000 copies, which sold out almost immediately, eventually reaching roughly 200,000 with a second printing in circulation. Earlier this year, a copy reportedly sold for an astonishing $15 million — not a bad investment for what had an original 10-cent cover price.

Well if that's correct, then even if it's true Action Comics sold out in the month it debuted, what this suggests is that even during the Golden Age, comics weren't the massive sky high success the MSM wants everyone to believe they were. I'm a big Super-fan myself, but I don't consider this great history, realizing the supplies of the times were hardly anything, and if it was little more than 200,000 copies overall as a pamphlet, surely it "sold out" simply due to how low the numbers were they printed up? I wonder how much even the anthology pamphlet where the Golden Age Human Torch, Ka-Zar and Sub-Mariner debuted had printed up in 1939? If it was little different for Marvel's early offerings, then even there, it's not like we have something to be proud of when the real numbers amount to a joke.

Nearly nine decades later, Superman remains one of the most recognizable figures in popular culture. The nostalgia alone spans generations.

While Supes may be a most recognized figure, it could sadly be argued his regular comics series aren't. Predictably, they don't make a serious point about that.

On the big screen, Christopher Reeve’s portrayal in 1978 led to four films in the franchise, including one film alongside Hollywood’s hottest actor of the time, Richard Pryor.

Odd they should mention the 3rd film so casually and superficially, because, while the 1st and 2nd major live action films showed promise, the 3rd and especially 4th were disasters, critically and financially. That the original Supergirl film was equally catastrophous is also sad.

More recent films — including “Man of Steel” and “Batman v Superman”— continued to reinterpret the character.

Last year’s “Superman” movie, directed by James Gunn, grossed $618.7 million worldwide, making it the 10th highest-grossing film of 2025.

Even here, the citations are superficial, delivered without any objectivity, or recognition of why, for every good project featuring the Man of Steel, there's also a bad one, and the clash between Supes and Batman was decidedly something we could've done without, based on how director Zack Snyder retained such a repellent bias in favor of the Masked Manhunter. Nor is there any mention of what atrocious politics Gunn's movie built on, and the new Supergirl film doesn't look like it'll be any improvement. For all we know, in the long run it'll probably be quite a setback to whatever plans WB has for a brand new franchise. And despite the box office sums given for Gunn's movie (which, granted, is a lot more to consider than what the Golden Age Superman actually sold), it didn't make as much as the 2013 movie, and probably didn't even turn enough of a profit, though today's filmmakers are clearly so unwilling to admit defeat, they'll just keep wasting money even if it eventually bankrupts the company.

Simmons has multiple copies of early Superman comics from the ’40s for sale in his shop that opened in 2010. His back counter also displays a detailed Italian porcelain mosaic reproduction of Superman #14.

Superman’s broad range is part of what makes him enduring.

“He’s done everything,” Riordan said. “He’s been noble. He’s been silly. He’s been thoughtful. He’s been stupid. That makes him a great character to explore Americana through.”

At the same time, that versatility can present challenges.

“So many people gravitate away from Superman because it seems like he can do anything,” Simmons said. “And how do you challenge a character like that?”

Wow, they sure chose a great "spokesperson" to lecture us about the subject. So magic, despite being mentioned in an earlier article, doesn't register high on a so-called historian's alleged knowledge? Fantastic. Come to think of it, it's also charming how nobody asks how the Man of Steel can be written challenging an adversary who relies on magical energies, or even mechanical technology and bioengineered superpowers, among other goodness-knows-what concepts in science-fantasy writing. Also absent from the above quotations is...Kryptonite radiation. How odd.

Stephen Meads, employee at Tasteecat Comics, sees that complexity as part of the appeal.

“He’s a very challenging character for a lot of people to write and maybe to relate to,” Meads said. “But I think Superman is a really great attempt to tackle the idea of an all-powerful figure who still chooses to do good.”

Meads said his earliest Superman-related items in his personal collection include his original “Death of Superman” issues from the early 1990s — a storyline that brought unprecedented attention to comic shops.

Few remember that moment more clearly than Debbie Smith of Excalibur Comics, Portland’s longest-running comic book store established in 1974.

When DC Comics announced Superman’s death in 1992, her family-owned shop leaned into the moment with an unusual marketing approach.

“My dad took out an ad in The Oregonian and made it look like an article,” Smith said. “The headline was ‘Death of a Hero.’ It talked about how Superman was going to die and told people to call and pre-order their copy.”

The response was immediate.

“We sold over 5,000 copies,” she said. “People lined up all the way around the block to get their copy when it came in.”

Smith points to Superman’s place in history as the foundation of her entire business.

“He birthed a whole genre,” she said. “He was one of the very first superheroes. You have to be thankful for him.”

But why must we be thankful to these retailers who make it sound like the death of a hero is literally something to celebrate? Even if Supes "died" heroically, that doesn't make it something to be utterly happy about. That kind of mentality is exactly what led soon after to Emerald Twilight, and then Identity Crisis a decade later. And people actually considered this something to crowd the streets for, waiting for their turn to buy a copy? Did they even read the ensuing story that spanned possibly 3 dozen issues or so for the following year, or did they store them all away in a vault, hoping this would later bring them a billionaire fortune? It's disgraceful, and if nobody advertised and lined up at the stores this way for the 1996 wedding with Lois Lane, that's decidedly telling too. It's chilling how tragedy is considered more worth celebrating than joyous moments in life. Such a mentality cannot continue to be inculcated in the public mindset.

Not every version of Superman resonates the same way for everyone.

“I loved the movies growing up,” Smith said. “But, as far as the comic books... I never cared too much for the comics because they were so goofy and so preposterous. And it always really, really annoyed me that Lois Lane was always trying to put herself into danger to make him prove that he loved her. That just annoyed me so much.” She joked, “I always rooted for him to let her fall, which is terrible.”

Steve Duin, former columnist for The Oregonian and noted comic book enthusiast, has a different take on Superman’s love interest. Duin, who never collected DC Comics, does own one piece of Superman art: a full-page piece by artist Tim Sale featuring a wordless moment between Lois and Superman. “I own it because of my passion for Lois Lane, fellow journalist.”

And here too, they obscure the importance of merit, along with whoever's credited to the writing and artwork of the 50s and 60s, when some of these stories were originally published. She may have "joked", but that's not funny, though it does make clear there's women out there who don't give a damn about lady co-stars even if they're meant to provide a figure who, if they wanted, could be written as flawed but admirable figures they can relate to. I recall once discovering a letter written by a woman to Amazing Spider-Man #125 in the months after Gwen Stacy was put to death in issues #121-2, who used alarmingly denigrating descriptions for somebody non-existent, with the irony being this same person actually wanted Mary Jane Watson developed more, even as she also acted like MJ were real too. Some could reasonably wonder if such confused idiots are the reason we wound up with a situation like 2007's One More Day, where not only was MJ kicked to the curb, we didn't get Gwen back either, and both were made to look bad earlier in the pages of J. Michael Straczynski's Sins Past story.

I find what the store manager says about Lois objectionable and insulting to the intellect, and hesitate to think what her positions could be about Jean Loring, Sue Dibny, Pepper Potts, Sapphire Stagg, Sharon Carter, Vicky Vale, Lana Lang and goodness knows what other lady cast members were ever created for the Big Two. If that's what she's going to tell a mainstream paper about even fictional characters whose original writers/artists worked hard to create them in the first place, then I don't want to buy at her store, period. Anybody who takes such an atrocious approach is not a serious person. As for the onetime columnist for the paper, if this is so he's never collected DC's comics, let alone Superman's, then while it's impressive he sets a good example by retaining a poster as opposed perhaps to a speculator's concealed collection that's possibly "slabbed", his failure to prove he's as avid a reader as the next person is decidedly galling.

After 88 years, Superman remains an enduring force. Both culturally and monetarily.

“If you pop over to our Tasteecat website, we do have a Superman #1 in inventory.” Meads said. “I think it’s only $95,000. So if you want to buy it.... Yeah, it’s available.”

And that's another insult to the intellect: instead of recommending some of the best reprints in archives, including the DC Finest series, they encourage everybody to spend tons of dollars on a back issue they'll never read and will conceal in a vault. What good are Marvel's Epic Collections and DC Finest archives if they won't recommend newcomers try out the older stories inside, and judge for themselves? Why, what good are even Image/Skybound's recent archives for GI Joe and Transformers if they won't recommend those either? This is proving one of the worst examples I've ever seen of retailers who sound like they're more interested in selling stuff they believe will be craved by blatant speculators than in encouraging anybody to read stories of adventure/romance/sci-fi that could give them a sense of entertainment and escapism, and hopefully something to learn from in terms of how to best manage one's life.

And look how they continue to claim Superman's still an enduring force, even though the franchise has been tainted by far-left ideologues who've forced in LGBT propaganda in most alarming fashion, and the Son of Kal-El spinoff was eventually cancelled as nobody liked or wanted to buy it. Even earlier, there was the sad case of Superman being exploited for anti-American propaganda, and simultaneously, a story where he's written just levitating between Iran's tyrant forces and civilian protesters, not making any effort to defeat the overlords at all. In all the time since Iran's forces working for the now deceased ayatollah Khameini slaughtered thousands of unarmed protestors, and even fired tons of missiles at Israel and other nearby regions, that 2011 Superman tale now looks very dated, to say nothing of utterly repellent, because it's insulting to the opressed citizens, especially women. And what about that time when Dan Jurgens depicted the Man of Steel defending Islamists and illegal immigrants? As a result, how can Superman still be called "culturally relevant", when these same ideologues even go so far as to distort the origins by claiming Supes is an "immigrant" too, instead of a refugee from a destroyed planet? That last year's movie even resorted to anti-Israel metaphors not only didn't help matters, it was also a slap in the face to creators Siegel and Shuster, whose ancestry came from Israel.

Superman will not remain relevant so long as leftist ideologues continue to hold his very creation hostage to their loathsome propaganda and ideologies, and hasn't. There's only so many comics creations of the past century who've been denigrated by ingrates in modern times, and many once perceptive stories have sadly been turned into a joke as a result of this shift. And we have jelly-spined retailers as much as the modern publishers and creators themselves to blame for the downfall of the Man of Steel and plenty other creations. It's enough to wonder if any sane person should finance their stores if they can't admit something's gone terribly wrong with today's management, morally, culturally or otherwise.

Jason Aaron's controversial comic being adapted to TV, and a certain problem with it is mentioned

Woke writer Jason Aaron's controversial comic titled "Southern Bastards" is being adapted to TV, and Pajiba's commented on how his co-creator, Jason Latour, makes it all the more complicated an affair:

Created by Jason Aaron and Jason Latour, the book told the story of a small town in Alabama that was home to a high school football coach/crimelord named Coach Boss, and all of the enemies he’s made over the years. Such enemies include Earl Tubb, who fights back against the maniacal coach. The comic book and its creators felt powerful. I remember Latour putting out an image in the style of the book of a bulldog pissing on the rebel flag in response to the Charlottesville riots. It rules.

Then, at some point, the book just… stopped. For a long time, I wasn’t sure why. It certainly didn’t come out quickly. Between April of 2014 and May of 2018, only 20 issues were released. Latour and Aaron are both successful comic creators, so I just assumed that other work had gotten in the way. I found out recently that that was not the case. It turns out that, in 2020, Jason Latour was accused of sexual harassment by illustrator and designer Lauren Tracey, a.k.a. Lorua. Then, surprise, many other people came forward to say that Latour was a creep. [...]

There was zero mention of Latour’s past in the announcement. I don’t expect there to be, but it does feel odd. It doesn’t seem that he will be involved, but the comic book was essentially cancelled due to his actions. There was a planned 21st issue that he was going to write and draw, which was never released. The second volume of the series was collected in 2022, but it doesn’t seem that there are any future plans for the series to continue, and, to my memory, the story on the page was far from finished.

Very interesting. One could wonder if such topics have anything to do with Aaron's own woke pandering. To date, it looks like Latour's career is mostly over after the accusations were made against him, though Aaron continues to be one of modern comicdom's worst contributors in terms of political correctness. If their would-be indie masterpiece stopped publication due to Latour's misconduct, it's hard to care. But while this article does remind of something troubling from the past several years, it fumbles near the end with a forked tongue cliche that was perhaps sadly expected:

In a world where I am (rightfully) constantly hearing about JK Rowling’s hateful actions whenever the new adaptation of Harry Potter is brought up, it just seems like there should be some talk about Latour as well.

Why do they keep mentioning their ludicrous beef with Rowling in the same articles as the subjects she claimed to have been a victim of? Do they realize they're throwing out whatever impact they hoped to make with bath water? Let's be clear. Latour's the one who made mistakes, not Rowling. The bizarre double standard in regards to Rowling has got to stop.

"Southern Bastards" sounds like little more than yet another dark crime drama that takes up too much of the market today, and I have no interest in viewing a live action adaptation of it any more than reading the comic. And yes, some discussion of Latour's sexual misconduct could be brought up. But anybody who's going to keep constantly putting Rowling in the very same boat is making their point utterly soggy, and it's about time that cease, as it reeks of ideological grudge-laden obsession, which is not how you make a valid point about serious issues.

What's gone wrong with a computer game company like Roblox

In a subject involving both video games and cartooning, Daniel Greenfield at Front Page Magazine says the computer game company Roblox is kowtowing to Islam, and to CAIR, an unindicted co-conspirator in terrorism, over images thought to be mockeries of Islam's "prophet" Mohammed:

CAIR, an unindicted terrorist funding co-conspirator, whose chapter had previously targeted an art teacher in Minnesota over paintings of Mohammed, is now coming after a shark in sneakers and the children who enjoy spreading its memes on a gaming platform known as Roblox.

According to the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the shark in sneakers is guilty of blasphemy for saying “porco Allah” or “Allah is a pig”. And so are the kids spreading memes of the shark, better known as ‘Tralalero Tralalá’ chanting “Allah is a pig”. (It rhymes in Italian.)

Worse still is ‘Bombardino Crocodilo’, a plane with a crocodile’s head, who likes ‘bombing Gaza’. In the original Italian, “non crede in Allah e ama le bombe”, doesn’t believe in Allah, but loves bombs. CAIR did not clarify whether crocodile planes should believe in the Islamic deity.

(Cartoon characters put out by Hamas, which has ties to CAIR, like a Mickey Mouse knock-off, a bee and a rabbit praise Allah and call for the genocide of non-Muslims, e.g., “you and I are laying the foundation for a world led by Islamist” and “I will finish off the Jews and eat them!”, so the Italian shark and crocodile would be expected to worship ‘Allah’ and kill non-Muslims.)

The children’s memes, known as ‘Italian Brainrot’, are big on absurdist rhymes that are meaningless to anyone who doesn’t speak Italian. “Tralalá”, the shark’s name, conveniently rhymes with “Allah”. It previously also describes god as a pig, but CAIR doesn’t object to that.

According to CAIR, mocking its deity is “hateful and discriminatory” and “ends up hurting marginalized communities and creating an unsafe environment for them.” Mocking Christianity, Judaism and every other religion however is fine, but mocking Allah makes Muslims “unsafe.”

This distorted effort to censor what Muslims consider to be ‘blasphemous’ under the guise of ‘victimhood’ reverses the reality. Mocking Islam doesn’t endanger Muslims, but it does pose a real threat of violence to cartoonists, including those massacred at the Charlie Hebdo magazine in France, from Muslim terrorists, and censorship and prison in much of the rest of the world.

The cartoon characters are AI generated and it’s quite possible that some of the nonsense verses are AI generated too in which case the blasphemy is AI generated as well. But Roblox, a massive global children’s gaming platform which has done little to stem pedophile abuses, rushed to appease CAIR, promising immediate censorship and action against the children.

CAIR has demanded that Roblox “identify and remove all ‘Italian Brainrot’ audio, chat, games” that have “blasphemous, or anti-Muslim/anti-Palestinian content”, automatically filter any further blasphemy against Islam so that Islam becomes the one religion that may not be mocked by cartoon sharks, planes with crocodile heads and the rest of the absurdist cartoon characters.

Roblox refuses to protect children against pedophiles, but is eager to censor kids for Islam.

“We take reports of discriminatory content extremely seriously and investigate them thoroughly,” Roblox promised. “We welcome dialogue with advocacy organizations like CAIR.” [...]

Roblox had been accused of exposing children to pedophiles, but exposing children to Islamists could be even worse. Parents should pressure Roblox to ensure that no information about the identities of those being targeted by CAIR’s blasphemy witchhunt will be revealed or leaked by insider employees to the Islamist organization as that could endanger the lives of children in America and around the world.

I think there's a serious case here for why parents and children must stop using Roblox for playing video games with, especially if it helps finance the company. This is profoundly disturbing, and the Roblox management does all this despite the cases made against CAIR, and despite how of recent, Florda and Texas have issued executive orders designating the organization a terrorist outfit. Any company that's going to give them the dignity of being communicated with is not a good business to provide consumerism for.

This definitely is an embarrassment for the video game industry as much as it is for the cartooning industry.

2nd season of politicized Daredevil TV show on Disney channels flops

John Nolte at Breitbart reveals the 2nd season of the far-left influenced Daredevil: Born Again TV show has tanked in ratings:

The Disney Grooming Syndicate’s second season of Marvel’s anti-Trump Daredevil: Born Again is looking like a bigger flop than the first season.

Disney+ is three episodes into season two, and not one of those three have appeared in the weekly top ten chart of original streaming shows. If you look at number ten on that chart, 239 million streaming minutes is enough to enter the top ten, which means Daredevil failed to even earn that much attention.

All ten episodes of the first season of Born Again, which is Disney’s reboot of the popular Netflix Daredevil show, failed to appear even once in Nielsen’s top-ten chart of streaming originals.

Looks like the chickens came home to roost. Less people are interested in being taken for a ride and having hammer-handed propaganda foisted upon them. The new series may draw from Frank Miller's 1986 DD storyline in name only, but all the same, I wonder how he feels that another something that might draw from his resume could be lumped alongside some of the other live action flops he was involved with in past decades? He has sadly remained a leftist, to the point where he'd kowtow to others if that's what it takes to remain within their good graces, and that could explain in part why he may have said nothing about where Disney took this latest venture. Which would only suggest that, despite any claims to the contrary, he doesn't care all that much about what past achievements he did have.

Anyway, it's long past time the live action Marvel adaptations were put to bed. They're not getting anywhere anymore, if at all, and the same can be said for what live action DC adaptations are still being produced. At one time, I'd be impressed if animation made an alternative, but if political propaganda makes its way in there too, that's why so long as it lasts, even animated adaptations are no longer something to look forward to.

Britain now has a town dedicated to the art form

The BBC recently announced there's a township in England that's been named as a comics-themed town:

Barrow-in-Furness has been named the UK's first "comic book town" in a bid to get more people reading.

Along with a new comic book festival, educational projects in primary schools and community activities will come to the Cumbrian town this year as part of the initiative.

The Lakes International Comic Arts Foundation (LICAF), which leads the project, said its research showed children's writing and reading ability could increase considerably when comic books were used in the classroom.

LICAF's director Julie Tait said the campaign recognised "the power of comics to transform reading and creativity".

"Special educational needs children particularly benefit, comics switch on in their brains in different ways," she said.

Okay, congratulations on what they've achieved. But it's to be hoped whatever they offer in education will have real value, and won't be some woke monstrosity that comes off more as indoctrination than education. Otherwise, whatever point this news is supposedly trying to make will be meaningless.

The misconceptions about Superman that even some fans believe

The Superman Homepage wrote about 8 misconceptions some people have about the Man of Steel. For example:

#1: “Superman is Boring Because He Always Wins”

Every hero always wins. Batman wins. Spider-Man wins. Wonder Woman wins. That’s how protagonist-driven stories work.

The question isn’t WHETHER Superman wins—it’s HOW. How does he save the day without destroying the city? How does he stop villains without killing? How does he cope when he can’t save everyone?

The best Superman stories make you emotional not because he punched harder, but because he took time to check on a reformed criminal over lunch.

Most importantly, the best Superman stories are usually those with the most talented writing involved. As the byline implies, this is another example of pseudo-fans who criticize fictional characters instead of the assigned writers. And even when heroes don't initially win, they lick their wounds and go back to battle after recovering from the setback. Of course, that's if the writers build the story that way, and Stan Lee and Steve Ditko did it with Spider-Man in his first battle with Dr. Octopus, and even his first clash with the Sandman can be considered.

What kind of lemmings throw around such garbage - first in letter pages and now on message boards - if they don't care/buy/read Superman comics? Undoubtably, many of the modern ones aren't customers of comicdom at all, and were just looking for pathetic excuses to rag on classic creators' hard work. They have no business saying anything about superhero comics at all.

The next example, however, has a problem with modern day propaganda:

#2: “He’s Too Powerful to Be Relatable”

Superman is a working-class immigrant who grew up on a farm and chooses to help others because he’s seen humanity’s potential for greatness.

He can’t play sports without risking injury to others. He constantly makes excuses to his boss. He misleads his closest friends daily to protect his identity. He belongs to two worlds but fits perfectly into neither.

That’s the immigrant experience. That’s deeply relatable.

Oh for crying out loud. With this, the Superman Homepage has once again demonstrated why I became alienated from it, recalling when they sugarcoated the Son of Kal-El spinoff's characterization of its star as gay for the sake of a modern woke agenda. Now in addition, they're distorting how Supes was created as an infant refugee from a destroyed distant planet who was adopted by an earthly couple in the midwestern USA. I guess they believe a mere infant could've gone about looking for rental rooms and real estate, right? Even Supergirl wasn't created as an immigrant, considering that, in the original Silver Age premise, she fled from what was written then as a space colony in danger of deterioration (though her parents and said colony survived, and made their home in the Bottle City of Kandor).

Let's be clear. Superman can be written as relatable simply because he was adopted and raised by a caring couple, working-class or otherwise, and can be written with the very complications alluded to here like secret IDs and what difficulties can arise as a result. That's not just an "immigrant" experience. Even refugee-style protagonists can face problems of all sorts, and not fit perfectly into even their adopted societies.

#3: “Superman Should Always Be Smiling”

Wrong. He was raised human with real emotions. He gets angry when pushed. He carries impossible weight. He struggles with choices no one should have to make.

Being hopeful doesn’t mean being naive. Being kind doesn’t mean being weak or perpetually cheerful. Real Superman has emotional complexity and depth.

Somehow, I doubt whoever insisted on that was serious, because there's troublemakers out there since the Golden Age who've attacked Mr. Fantastic of the Fantastic Four for supposedly lacking personality, and sounded like they believe all heroes should get mad all the time. It basically amounts to a classic "damned if you do and don't" situation, and no decent writer should pander to hypocrites, no matter the tone or content of their messages, though it can be said anybody who's going to be as obnoxious as some anonymous social media users can be is not somebody we should be accommodating at all, period.

#4: “Superman Just Punches Things”

Superman is extremely smart. He’s fluent in every Earth language plus multiple alien ones. He learned Kryptonian independently. He builds and repairs advanced alien technology in his workshop.

He’s trained in martial arts under Batman and Wonder Woman. He’s mastered Kryptonian combat forms. He’s such a skilled actor that he once attended a costume party dressed AS SUPERMAN and lost the contest.

His mind is his greatest weapon.

Depending how a story is written though, Supes could be portrayed viewing martial arts tournaments and video recordings of said practices, and learn from those how to perform the best martial arts techniques. It's not like Batman and Wonder Woman have to be brought in to teach him in all instances, since in past years, Kal-El was portrayed as having an excellent memory system.

#5: “Magic is Like Kryptonite”

Magic affects Superman the same way it affects anyone. If a wizard can turn Batman into a frog, he can turn Superman into a frog.

Magic isn’t a weakness like Kryptonite. It’s something he has no special defense against. His durability applies to magical damage, but not reality manipulation or transformation.

It’s fairness, not vulnerability.

This reminds me that, during the mid-80s, there was a Thor story where the God of Thunder was turned into a frog. And if it's okay for Marvel to conceive a story like that, it was always okay and still is for DC to do the same. Maybe even to turn Superman into an elephant!

#6: “Clark Kent is Fake”

Both identities are authentic. There’s no mask—just code-switching for different contexts.

Clark isn’t bumbling because it’s an act. He’s genuinely adjusting—a farm boy navigating cramped city spaces while constantly restraining superhuman strength. His clumsiness is real adaptation, not deception.

Both Superman and Clark are genuine expressions of who he is.

I think the complainers are fake Super-fans. I don't believe they're Spider-Man fans either, period. Nor are they Lois Lane fans.

The next item is a repeat of the first, and most unfortunately doesn't take an objective view of a certain early 90s storyline:

#7: “Superman Never Loses”

He literally died fighting Doomsday. The Exile arc shows him losing repeatedly. Zod, Darkseid, the Eradicator, Dominus—all defeated him.

Worse are the moral losses. When Toyman murdered a child while Superman was abroad, that haunted him. He can’t be everywhere. He can’t save everyone.

What makes him Superman isn’t never losing—it’s getting back up anyway.

While it's not wrong to write a story where Superman fails to save everyone - and the 1983 story where Lex Luthor destroyed the planet Lexor in all his blind hatred for the Man of Steel is one example - it was still in poor taste to just wipe out Cat Grant's son, which makes it difficult to use the Toyman again if it remains canon, and only makes Toyman into another variation on the Joker, as a result. To be sure, there are other stories depicting Superman failing to save an innocent life that were written in better taste, up to the turn of the century. But the fate of Cat Grant's son was forced and distasteful in hindsight, with the worst part being that writers like Dan Jurgens have never addressed whether it was a good idea to start with.

#8: “Superman is Basically a God”

He’s someone trying to do right who happens to have extraordinary abilities. The power doesn’t make him special—the choice does.

Anyone with his powers could rule nations or take whatever they want. His restraint—choosing to use godlike power for good—that’s what defines him.

He’s not a god pretending to be human. He’s human-raised, choosing kindness over domination.

He's made of flesh and blood, no matter how high his endurance is to pain and injury. Same with Supergirl, if it matters. At the end of the item, the distortion from example 2 is regurgitated:

The Truth About Superman

Superman isn’t boring, overpowered, or unrelatable. He’s a working-class immigrant choosing compassion when he could choose conquest. He’s the friend who shows up when needed.

That’s what makes him super.

Well, the writer sure capped that one with an insult to the intellect. That's what makes him an icon-hijacking propagandist. There are valid points to be found in what's presented, but the political propaganda takes away much of the potential. Such mendacious buffoons are otherwise unsuited to speak in the name of Siegel and Shuster's legacy. And now that I think of it, if there's a glaring shortcoming here, it's that no clear points are made why even Superman stories stand or fall based on the writing and art merit. Without that, one could say we're right back at square one, with little accomplished as a result.

What a Catholic commentator has to say about Marvel/DC history while discussing Voyage Comics' contributions to the medium

A writer at the Catholic World Report discusses Voyage Comics, the publisher specializing in religiously-themed stories, and along the way, has what to say about past Marvel/DC publications with allusions to leftist ideology. Some of which are admittedly quite interesting to ponder, including a certain aforementioned tale from 1986 that led to a disturbing form of editorial mandate the following decade or so:

Back in the late 80s and into the 90s, even as an unphilosophical teenager and avid consumer of comic books, I was well aware of flaws in the fantasy worlds of Marvel and DC.

I can, for instance, recall seeing through the thinly veiled propaganda of an “X-Men” graphic novel entitled God’s Country, the villain of which was a small-minded religious bigot who refused to tolerate super-powered mutants. One storyline of The Legion of Super-Heroes depicted a xenophobic dictator taking over the Earth, resulting in a terrible regime whereby hapless space aliens were persecuted.

Quite aside from the obvious virtue-signaling, I was also put off by the superficial and trite conflation of issues such as trans-humanism and extra-terrestrial life with the “gay rights” movement. Do slogans like Coexist! and Can’t we all get along? really represent the only response to the presence among us of alien beings endowed with godlike powers?

In any event, an issue of The Incredible Hulk would finally cut to the chase by featuring S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury bragging about his organization’s acceptance of homosexuals.

To be sure, even in the mainstream comic book industry, there have been exceptions that veer from the reservation of liberal ideology. I still have an old issue of Batman, wherein the hero tracks down an insane criminal who would solve the homelessness problem … by killing off all the homeless. Unfortunately, some of the most interesting comics that part ways with leftist ideology are excessively dark. For example, Frank Miller’s iconic The Dark Knight Returns is laced with gratuitous obscenity and over-the-top violence, making it impossible to recommend this otherwise fascinating account of an indomitable, haunted man resuming his obligation to protect his home city from chaos.

Interesting the guy does have a problem with Miller's resort to jarring violence in the story, though I hardly consider DKR a title worth the time, if only because of what it led to years later, though of course I realize it's not Miller and his story who're literally and/or solely to blame, but rather, any editors and publishers who came within even miles of forcing successive writers to adopt a path where Bruce Wayne would be portrayed as a nasty control freak, almost entirely lacking a sense of humor or any kind of happiness amid the darkness. That direction also led to the horrific mistreatment of Stephanie Brown/Spoiler, because if memory serves, there were storylines where it was implied superhero missions are unsuited for younger protagonists, and all this in a world that was otherwise meant to be surreal. IIRC, even in Geoff Johns' Teen Titans title, this shoddy path was alluded to at one point.

I think the columnist goofed with the title of the X-Men GN, which I believe is actually "God Loves, Man Kills", originally published around 1982, and was the 5th in the Marvel Graphic Novel series that lasted until about 1993, comprising at least 75 stories. And since that came up, one can only wonder if Chris Claremont would've written up a villain who was a Muslim adherent? IIRC, when Claremont later wrote an unsuccessful 2nd volume of Gen13 that came after September 11, 2001, he added a character who was a Muslim to the cast, indicating Claremont was an early example of a writer who went woke in comicdom. And where exactly in the Hulk was Nick Fury boasting about welcoming LGBT agents into S.H.I.E.L.D? Perhaps in the 1990s, when it was more likely such propaganda would turn up, and the late Peter David was known to be a supporter of such ideologies. It is a shame he had to make such a big deal about it, even if at the time, most writers like him originally did it more subtly, unlike the very disturbingly contrived and forced way it's been handled since. Although, lest we forget, the disgraced Gerard Jones was one shoddy writer of his sort from the times who did it, as mentioned, in a very contrived and forced manner, at the expense of a more talented writer (Roy Thomas)'s creation from Infinity Inc. And that was definitely wrong. For all we know, what Jones did may have precipitated the alarming trend among leftist writers of changing a heterosexual character to homosexual, and it eventually led to the damage even X-Men's cast underwent. And even before all that, there was a time when William Messner-Loebs changed the Pied Piper from the Flash to gay in 1990. Just because this was a reformed crook who underwent an alteration of personality, does that make it inherently acceptable? Of course not.

Happily, Voyage Comics avoids political correctness on the one hand and runaway sex and violence on the other, instead opting to celebrate heroes both more down-to-earth and more wholesome than what we typically find in Marvel and DC. Also, intriguingly, heroes are placed not in the immediate “now” but are situated within historical fiction; the “Lionette” and “Phantom Phoenix” titles are set in America in the period between the World Wars.

...A sick popular culture very much needs a Catholic presence, and one way to maintain such a presence is by imprinting artifacts of that popular culture with a Catholic vision. Certainly, our history and culture are replete with real-life heroism, protagonists, and images, which warrant our children’s attention more than do Spider-Man or Green Lantern.

On this, I would disagree just in how he implies Spidey and GL in and of themselves aren't worth our children's time. There was once a time they were relevant, and when most writers/editors didn't force extreme political beliefs into the stories under the confidence that, because these were corporate-owned, they could get away with it. But that began to collapse over time, with GL an early victim of PC post-1988, and Spidey the next victim years later in the early 2000s, when J. Michael Straczynski got his mitts on the writing assignment. I think back to that time and feel disgust at all the apologists who defended and justified JMS' writing, at least until the whole Sins Past debacle came around, and only then may they finally have conceded it wasn't worth the paper wasted to print it. Today, it's definitely aged poorly.

So it's great to have religious stories to tell from that specific perspective of what figures can be considered heroic. Even so, I don't think the columnist should be telling all this at the expense of the hard work figures like Stan Lee did in his time. That kind of bias never helps.

FCBD will see changes, based on new competing event with different publishers

Fox8 reports that this year's Free Comic Book Day held in the Piedmont Triad area (North Carolina) will also see another alternate event, previously mentioned here:

Historically, many of the major comic publishers, including giants Marvel and DC, have participated in the event together. This year, however, the event is splitting in two.

The breakup follows after Diamond Comic Distributors went bankrupt in 2025, leaving other companies to swoop in and pick up where Diamond left off.

The rights to the “Free Comic Book Day” brand were sold to Universal Distribution, which plans to bring Free Comic Book Day back on May 2. On the same day, Penguin Random House plans to launch a rival event called Comics Giveaway Day.

This means you’ll still get plenty of free comics, but this time they will be separated with some coming under the Free Comic Book Day branding and others arriving under the Comics Giveaway Day branding.

Free Comic Book Day will include publishers like DC, Image, Dynamite and Archie Comics.

Comics Giveaway Day will include publishers such as Marvel, Dark Horse, Boom! Studios and Tokyopop.

They certainly did split into 2 rival events, with 3-4 publishers each, if we go by what's listed. But what if any of their offerings amount to little more than "throwaway day"? Years ago when FCBD first launched, I obtained a few items that weren't worth the paper they were printed upon, artistically speaking. So why must we assume this year's double event will be any improvement? I have no idea why Marvel decided to shift to a competing event, unless they believe there's still plenty of mindless zombies out there who'll buy their books no matter what the quality, or lack thereof, but this really isn't anything to be excited about anymore. Interesting though that the company who must've bought some of Diamond's old assets is actually going to continue FCBD though. Because who knows if it'll turn a profit for them any more than it ever did for Diamond? For all we know, it probably won't.